


I don't blame you for being you but you can't blame me for hating it

by brokensongbird



Series: you're the only place that feels like home [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Break Up, Established Relationship, F/M, Good Brother Diego Hargreeves, Loss of Trust, Police Officer Diego Hargreeves, Relationship Deterioration, Trust Issues, no beta we die like ben, secrets are bad y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:50:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21824836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokensongbird/pseuds/brokensongbird
Summary: Eudora Patch knows that her boyfriend is a secretive man, it's pretty obvious his trust issues have trust issues, but she likes to think that she knows the things that matter.POV of Eudora from the first story of the series, Half Doomed & Semi-Sweet.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch
Series: you're the only place that feels like home [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1572658
Comments: 8
Kudos: 251





	I don't blame you for being you but you can't blame me for hating it

Eudora Patch had first met Diego Espinoza at the police academy, where they both graduated joint top of the class. First impressions on her end weren’t great, in all honesty. At first, she thought he was dangerous. There was something about him, some behaviour or some look in his eyes that set off all sorts of alarm bells in her mind.

There must have been some sort trained background, he held back in the physical exam and still managed to take down 3 grown men by himself. And sometimes, he stared off into the middle distance so intently that she wanted to arrest him for the future murder she was sure he was going to commit. His competitiveness wasn’t playful, it was full of fury, of buried tension and the reckless need to be the best at all costs, and when he was, he would flaunt it.

He was majorly paranoid; Eudora had spoken to him maybe 3 times before she started wondering how in the hell, he had passed the psych exam. So, Diego came off like an arrogant, pretentious bastard with all the secrets he kept close to his chest like he thought he was the next perp they were going to dissect. He had more trust issues than cells in his body and all-round was a cocky, annoyingly good cop.

Diego thought that Patch was uptight, too by the book and absolutely formidable.

Inevitably, they hooked up in the first two months of meeting each other. Diego had turned to her the moment they both caught their breath and said, “I don’t do relationships so don’t expect anything.”

Eudora had laughed in his face and replied, “That really won’t be an issue, trust me, Espinoza.”

They started dating one month after that.

* * *

A year and a half later, Eudora admitted that she might not know all there was to know about Diego, but she knew that he trusted her with more information than he had anyone else in his life.

She knew that although he was as Hispanic as they came, he didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. He barely knew what “Como te llamas” meant but when he wasn’t focusing, he would mumble in fluent French. He just shrugged and said he had an old-fashioned education. Sometimes the other Hispanics in their community would make fun of him for not being one of them, and as much as Eudora would beat them to death if she could, she couldn’t help but wonder why Diego didn’t even seem to know where he came from.

Her dad had never been to Colombia himself, but they had the flag displayed in the living room and celebrated la Día de las Velitas every December 7th.

Speaking of family, he always insisted that he was an only child, that he had no cousins and that his parents died a few years ago.

But one day when they had been grocery shopping together, having just moved in together and not used to the banality of adult life, Eudora watched Diego peruse the Mother’s Day cards like it was the most important choice of his life. She said nothing when he picked out a sweet card with a 1950’s blonde housewife on the front surrounded by what could only be a litter of children baking cookies together and had to hold back a tidal wave of emotion. She said nothing when he had to find an extra sheet of paper to put into the card because he had filled all the space on the inside already.

She guessed it was his way of grieving.

What was weirder was when some druggie turned up at their door one afternoon saying she was Diego’s sister. Eudora looked her up and down, at this scrawny 5 foot nothing white girl who was shaking so badly it was a wonder her clothes hadn’t fallen off her and had to hold in her incredulous laughter.

“I’m sorry, but Diego is an only child.”

“No – Diego’s my brother, he’s the one that obsessed with knives and can dance the best of any of us and always listened to me playing the violin, no matter how bad I was. Please I need, I _really_ need help.” Eudora felt sorry for her and told her to go to the rehab centre down the block if she needed help, not try and rob some random apartment. The girl left with tears in her eyes, but apologised politely, hugging her small trembling frame.

That day Eudora, thinks back, was a mistake.

She knew about Diego’s knife collection; she knew how well her man could dance to cheesy 80s pop from various drunk nights out. But she also knew for certain that Diego was an only child, and that he hated the sound of a violin, even in movies. So, she never told Diego about that visitor, but it stuck in the back of her mind as another one of his mysteries.

Like why, in addition to the random French swearing, some words were always pronounced in a British accent. Kind of like that girl when she was begging.

Shaking herself, Patch resorted to her favourite method of expressing her thoughts: lists.

She wrote everything she knew for certain about Diego in one column, and all the things that were still confusing, avoided or just basic information she just never received in the other. Patch knew they needed to have a talk when his birthday went in the list under “unknown.” That and the lists were hilariously disproportionate.

Now, Eudora knew logically that he didn’t know everything about her either, because they had only known each other just under two years, but at the same time, the only thing that that list had confirmed for her was that Diego didn’t trust her, with more than just his secrets but with almost all of his identity. For fuck’s sake, he might even have a secret sister! Nothing about him made sense and not in the oh people are messy collections of experience way but in the way that meant there was a big hole in the centre of the person that she thought she knew.

Yes, she knew that he loved making pancakes in the mornings but hated oatmeal with a passion that was frankly a little dramatic. She knew that he put on a tough exterior to cover up a gooey centre, that right there in middle was the man she loved, the one that supported her career wholeheartedly and did little things just to see her smile.

But she didn’t know why some mornings he’d scream himself awake, suddenly clutching a knife like it was a teddy bear despite never leaving the bed.

He could have a secret separate life; she hadn’t told him that her mom thinks she could do better.

* * *

One night, around three months after the minor doubts began turning into a typhoon of uncertainty, their apartment is broken into. And Diego knows the man, somehow. Somehow, her reasonably strait-laced police officer boyfriend was close enough to an insane, ex-murdering, homeless addict that breaking into their apartment at 4 am was a minor inconvenience. An insane homeless addict that spoke perfectly accented French.

With that and the fact Diego was so obviously trying to keep him quiet about something, Eudora joins the conversations and listens to what this guy is saying.

What really shook Patch was that this guy, for all he wasn’t saying, showed quite a lot through his actions. She saw in him the same danger she had seen in Diego all that time ago. There was raw power in all of their movements that belied a competency, a warning that they weren’t to be messed with, no matter how objectively ridiculous he looked. This man, Klaus, with his serpentine smile, she could believe was Diego’s brother even if they both denied it. ~~But that meant Diego was a Hargreeves -~~

When Klaus told her that his sister was missing and Diego had lost all cognitive function, she thought back to that day with that one girl. But it couldn’t have been her. Okay, maybe Diego was hiding adopted siblings, but that girl was nothing like them at all. Eudora had seen more threatening kittens! There was no way that that mouse of a girl, who was folded into herself like her taking up space was offensive was raised beside these men.

But Diego had so many secrets. And he never trusted her with any of them.

Then the invader was leaving, finally, and she could get some rest and pretend that she knew the man she shared her life with, but he threw a comment about his sister being homeless as well and the look on Diego’s face would haunt her. There was no way that this was just some friend.

To top it all off, her confident, competent Diego had a stutter. He had a fucking speech impediment and she never knew about it; he had hidden that from her too. Oh, and his supposed nickname was ‘Two,’ but he had responded so viscerally to it that she wondered if he would respond to that better than Diego. She knew that he never seemed to connect to his name, but she thought that was because of the whole Spanish heritage thing, not that the name might be fake.

When the insane guy was throwing insults at her microwave, she considered that she might be jumping to conclusions, the source of this information seemed pretty fucking unreliable.

But then Diego had looked at him so affectionately, had played with the man’s hair with such a strong look of love that she knew. She didn’t just doubt and suspect.

The next sentence just confirmed that the man she loved had lied to her for the entirety of their relationship.

“Let’s go find my baby sister.”

* * *

The next day she received a phone call from Diego while she was on duty and had to take an early break so as not to cause a scene.

“I told the Sarge that you had a family emergency, but he’s pissed at you,” she said as soon as the phone call had connected.

“Hey. Thanks, Eu.” He only called her Eu when he had bad news, he wanted to lighten up first. Patch immediately started chewing on her nails, a habit she hid from him because she thought it was disgusting.

“How're your siblings?” Because there are two of them, that you forgot to mention. _Actually, there are six,_ her mind whispered tauntingly.

 _Shut up,_ she wanted to scream back. She didn’t because she’s a composed, healthy adult who didn’t scream when she was frustrated no matter how much she was dying to. God, she wanted to scream in his face that how dare he build a relationship off of lies, but then she remembered his warning from the first time they’d slept together. Maybe expecting him to be the person he pretended to be was expecting too much. She was dwelling too much in her own thoughts that she’d missed what he said and had to get him to repeat himself, even though she knows how much he hates to. _He doesn’t like it because it reminds him of his stutter_. She knows, now.

“Klaus is suffering from early withdrawal symptoms and has passed out. Seven – Vanya,” Both people flinch at the casual use of their numbers. “She’s unconscious but okay. No long-term damage, at least physically. She’s probably going to need years of therapy but then she can join the club.”

The Diego she knew never joked about his own mental health, he didn’t like to admit he had any problems but was that because he was competitive? Was it because he didn’t want her to worry? Was it because he could never tell her about any of the fucking trauma he had to endure as a child?

She didn’t respond. Was this what their relationship was going to be now? Her doubting every word he said, comparing him to the person he had made up?

“P-Patch?” he asked haltingly. Her Diego didn’t stutter.

“Espin-” She caught herself with a sigh. Did she call him Hargreeves now? Could she? Hargreeves was branded into her mind as a cult of powered freaks. But Espinoza was a lie. “Diego?” she finally settled on.

“Are we okay?”

She hated that he sounded so small.

“That’s not really a conversation for the phone.”

She hated that she sounded so unaffected.

He agreed, sounding contrite. They made conversation for a few minutes before he rushed out a line about V waking up and hung up.

Patch tried to tell herself that it was okay, he was just being a good big brother. Her Diego wasn’t a big brother.

She sat down at her desk and tried to get on with some paperwork.

Later that evening she got another phone call. Vanya was pregnant, and she and Klaus needed a place to stay, he wasn’t going to let them go again, he said. They didn’t have a spare bedroom and there was no way Diego, with his old-fashioned education, would let a pregnant woman sleep on the couch.

She told him it was okay. She said that it was okay, she felt like their relationship wasn’t working anyway and she’d be moving out as soon as she found her own place.

She lied.

She was so selfish that she wanted that fake Diego back. The one who had space for her in his life. But maybe there had only been space for her because he had erased all the people he loved to be able to fit her in, and that wasn’t fair.

It also wasn’t fair that he had loved her because she didn’t know him. It wasn’t fair that she didn’t love the man once she knew the secrets.


End file.
